Facilities can have number of entry points that need to be secured from unwanted visitors or trespassers. Conventional means for securing access to facilities typically require one or more something a person possesses (e.g., a badge), some feature describing the person (e.g., a fingerprint), and/or something the person knows (e.g., a password). Some entry points of facilities may be locations in which entrants pass through by vehicle. In some cases, traffic can be accrue when entrants' access assessments are conducted inefficiently. And in some cases, conventional means of determining access may be too slow for entry points to facilities having such vehicle lanes.
In conventional vehicle entry points, a driver approaching a facility arrives at a gate and comes to a stop. A guard must read an identification badge associated with the driver to determine whether the driver may be granted access. In some conventional entry points, a driver may stop their vehicle at the gate, bring down a window, and present a badge to a badge-reading device or panel. This type of badge-reading device electronically sends data associated with the badge to a server that will determine whether access should be granted to the driver.
When a badge-reader is used, the badge could be valid but, in some cases, it is difficult to determine if the driver is the appropriate card holder. When a guard assesses the badge, the driver may be identified but, in some cases, it could be difficult to determine whether the badge is valid. Conventional methods exercising some combination of both badge-readers and guards can be expensive and/or inefficient.
Some conventional access control means can implement biometric assessments of drivers. In some cases, may assess the fingerprint of drivers. Fingerprints may be inefficient however. In some cases, scanners can require a relatively long time to extract a print; especially when considering traffic accumulation at a facility entry point. Moreover, in an outside environment, it can be expensive and inefficient to keep the surface of a fingerprint reader clean.
At facility access points relying on guards, a proper assessment may be susceptible to human error, whether intended or innocent. Human guards are vulnerable to social engineering, may take a long time to determine an identity, and may commit any number of natural human errors. Moreover, human guards may only access data immediately provided to them. Conventional control points may provide for a computer for which guards may access information from a central database. However, such conventional systems may be limited in scope. Human guards can not automatically scan through records stored at a plurality of databases using a plurality of identifying metrics (e.g., license plate, biometrics, badge).
What is needed is an efficient but secure means of providing for controlling access to a facility at an entry point designed for vehicles and/or pedestrians. What is needed is a means for controlling access that can assess a driver's identity using more than one data point. What is needed is an automated means for accurately identifying vehicles and passengers that may remove aspects of human error. What is needed is a means for scanning various databases based on multiple observations of entrants and vehicles and making assessments based on existing and prior relationships of those observed characteristics and vehicles of such entrants.